While most content marketers have the written word down pat, many are still ignoring the two newest and most popular forms of visual communication – emojis and GIFs.

These two communication techniques can make up for useful cues often missing online.

Sure, there is an obvious entertainment value, but linguists believe both emoji and gifs play an important role in making modern digital discussion smoother.

In fact, many people believe those visuals aren’t just helpful for adding clarity in text and mobile messages, but that they can better express themselves through these digital tools than via old-fashioned words.

But your brand can’t just throw out a thumbs up or two. You need to really understand how they work for your company and how to use them correctly.

Emoji

What started out as a smiley face here and there eventually replaced entire words and sentences.

There’s an emoji for when I don’t know what to say or when I don’t really want to respond at all. I use emoji because I don’t like small talk.

These “picture characters” – as the word translates in Japanese – have caught a lot of slack over the years as causing regressive communication skills. But these elitist simply don’t understand communication in its entirety.

WWF uses emoji to engage audiences and inspire philanthropy.

Emojis aren’t relevant for long-form, written communication. Its relevance lies in the abbreviated digital messages of daily life — social-media, text, chat messages. From the fun and flirty to sympathy and frustration.

Emoji isn’t here to eradicate the written language but rather to fill in the emotional cues. It allows us to be more effective communicators.

GIFs

Short for Graphics Interchange Format, GIFs are easy to consume and understand. This makes them extremely attractive for brands trying to enhance their visual content message.

GIFs represent the exact feeling users want to express.

As Adam Leibsohn, founder of GIPHY, explains, “The internet wasn’t built for words… Words were made for writing and communicating because you needed to make words portable before there were computers; before the internet happened. So why are we still typing?”

Facebook officially embraced GIFs in July 2015 when the platform introduced a GIF search engine to Messenger. Twitter followed suit in February 2016.